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Time Out says

This review is from 2017. 'Follies' returns to the National Theatre in February 2019.

There’s nothing like a Stephen Sondheim musical to make you wonder what the hell everybody else is playing at. Revived at considerable expense, with a lot of style, and a frankly extraordinary cast headed by Imelda Staunton and Janie Dee, ‘Follies’ is to the average West End song-and-dance show what Shakespeare’s sonnets are to ‘Love Island: The Reunion’.

‘Follies’ is an elegiac, eloquent work about age and disappointment, about the agonising clash between the fires of youth and the pragmatism of late middle age. It is about illusion and reality, razzle-dazzle and darkness. And it pierces both heart and brain in Dominic Cooke’s towering NT revival.

Broadway, 1971: a soirée is taking place in the shattered shell of a defunct theatre (a brilliantly ominous Vicky Mortimer set). Thirty years ago it hosted the liveliest revue show in town: now its former owner, Dimitri Weismann, has decided to throw a lavish, boozy party to mark the building’s passing, inviting back the old showgirls and their customers.

The leads are divided into their present selves and their 30-years-ago incarnations, who haunt them like ghosts and occasionally take centre-stage. So we have broken dreamer Sally (Staunton), acid-tongued Phyllis (Dee), dissolute multi-millionaire Ben (Philip Quast) and loserish nice guy Buddy (Peter Forbes); but we also have them in their mid-twenties (Alex Young, Zizi Strallen, Adam Rhy-Charles and Fred Haig), all passion and hormones and confusion. Do we envy that fire? Or their current success? And is it them we pity, or ourselves and our own lost pasts?

To articulate all this Cooke has gathered a huge and prodigious cast to render Sondheim’s arsenal of remarkable songs. Many of them are dispatched as ‘turns’ – in a relatively peripheral role, Tracie Bennett pretty much nukes the house with her one big moment in the spotlight with the gorgeous ‘I’m Still Here’.

And then there are the leads: just a few months after snarling through the West End’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, bona fide national treasure Staunton is such a good actor that it’s still a slight shock to be reminded what a great singer she is – you could live inside her bittersweet last note on ‘In Buddy’s Eyes’ forever. She owns the most complex role of Sally, who has left town, married and had children but somehow hopelessly failed to move on from the ’40s. Dee has the more ‘fun’ part as Phyllis, vamping it up while tossing out tart liners like hand grenades. But she nails the wistful tightrope act of playing the sexy panto villain while showing us the lines that connect her to thevulnerable girl of the past, desperate for approval from the unworthy young Ben.

Former Royal Court boss Cooke graduates with flying colours as he directs his first major musical. He brings the edge you’d hope for, a hard clarity and sense of brooding dread, but abetted by a formidable team notably choreographer Bill Deamer (GREAT tap sequences) and Mortimer – not least for the costumes – who knocks the ball far out of the park for the fancy stuff too. The audacious final sequence, in which the four leads’ final fates are revealed in a phantasmagoric revue show, is as overwhelmingly opulent as you could hope for, a whirl of sumptuous pastel outfits, spectacular dancing and astringent song.

Actually genuinely nicknamed ‘God’, Sondheim really is peerless. But he’s still very hard to get right: it’s easy to get bogged down in the intellectualism of it all. But get him right Cooke and co do – the NT seems to have pumped half of the year’s budget into it. ‘Follies’ is no folly but a perfect, devastating evocation of the pain of looking back. Plus: tap-dancing!

‘Follies’ will be screened in cinemas nationwide as part of NT Live on Nov 16

There is good availability for tickets from November to the end of the run (Jan 3)

As a big fan of musicals, and probably an even bigger fan of Imelda Staunton (I loved her in Gypsy and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) I knew this was a must get ticket. I also went with big expectations due to the other big names in this production (Janie Dee for example). However, I think personally the show didn't live up to the hype that I had generated for myself or for the many stella reviews I read. I think the singing was excellent, and the costumes were great. The set too was commendable. However, it just was not as gripping or entertaining as what I would have hoped for. It was like attending a high school reunion of your distant cousin's school 30 years later, when you never even attended the school and you don't feel a sense of belonging or familiarity at all!

I keep going
to musicals and getting disappointed – that wasn’t different... Besides a few
highlights, the music is quite unremarkable. The choreography seems to try to
be grand but it really doesn’t convince. And with that, the lack of a proper
plot is very evident.

The last night of the Follies nightclub is the background to put together a few
old cabaret dancers and tell a little about their stories, giving more
attention to two dancers (Imelda Stanton and Janie Dee) and their husbands.
Some characters seem to have interesting stories, but all they get is one song
and a couple of zingers, not enough to really create a character we’d care
about. And with all these people, the main couples’ stories can’t really be
developed either. Imelda Staunton is great in the very little she can do with
her needy and dumbfounded Sally. The best part is definitely of Phyllis, played
marvellously by Janie
Dee. She does get most of the
funny lines, her bitterness and disdain for her husband is wonderfully acted
and the songs she gets to sing are the best lyrics in the play. It was worth
watching for her, but I wouldn’t recommend it for any person who’s not a BIG
fun of musicals.

I saw this as a preview so maybe it has improved since then, but I did not enjoy the show and found it to be quite amateurish. There were quite a few scenes involving the older characters where their younger selves were just loitering about, making it a bit chaotic and muddled. It was also quite long, and I'm not sure there was a huge amount of plot. The costumes were amazing though, particularly the younger selves outfits. Not worth the hype in my opinion!

Batshit crazy but visually stunning Sondheim musical about a group of showgirls reuniting at their old theatre before it's torn down. Imelda Staunton and Janie Dee are old friends who became love rivals and haven't seen each other for years. The set was impressive and some classic Sondheim songs are great to hear, but the plot came across as muddled and too long for me as someone unfamiliar with it.

I can't put my finger on why I didn't love this show like everyone else. There were some stunning moments, spoiler: the group number of the older folly ladies and their glamourously clad younger selves is stunning. I just found it hard to get lost in their world and the longing of youth. Imelda Staunton and Janie Dee are two powerhouse leads, but one would expect no less from such seasoned actresses. The set was beautiful, a crumbling dilapidated revolving theatre, a metaphor for the marriages of the main characters perhaps? At 2 hours 15 mins without an interval I found myself getting a bit restless and the final 'folly' scenes of each of the four leads in turn, frankly got a bit tiresome.

This Sondheim's remake in National Theatre deserves every penny that you are going to pay for it. An amazing production with lots of costumes, spot-on lighting, excellent direction and Imelda Staunton on the leading role giving her best performance ever. A musical that you definately have to see!

Follies is probably Sondheim's most traditional musical, in that it has set pieces, dance routines, show girls and, separate songs that don't bleed into each other. However, it is still complex; the story has great depth and some of the songs are operatic in nature.

It is expensive and complicated to produce, it has a large cast, with demanding roles throughout the company. Full productions of Follies are rare, so when there is a high quality, committed revival, such as this on offer, the opportunity needs to be grabbed.

Its Sondheim, so the material is fantastic. Its the National Theatre, so the production values are top notch. Imelda Staunton, Janie Dee, Philip Quast and Peter Forbes are the four leads, so the acting and singing are outstanding.

It has Tracie Bennett and Geraldine Fitzgerald in supporting roles so it has incredible strength in depth.

Follies at the National Theatre is fantastic, and given all the ingredients that went into it, there was never any doubt that it would be.

Be aware before sitting down that Follies runs for two and a quarter hours with no interval! The premise of the show is that the theatre where The Follies used to be performed on Broadway is about to be torn down and the former Follies girls have been invited back, thirty years later, to reminisce and celebrate what was. The show starts out beautifully with flashbacks to the Follies girls in their dazzling costumes. The show then very cleverly flits between the present and past, showing us that time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds. Imelda Staunton was wonderful as always, but I thought that Janie Dee playing Phyllis had the stand out role. When Dee sang The Story of Lucy and Jessie, I felt like I was watching Nicole Kidman on stage.

Book now! This show is wonderful - great songs, dance, humour, drama etc. It is totally unaffordable as the cast is not only huge, but requires even small parts to be done by star performers. The National Theatre is probably the only organisation who can afford to do this - courtesy of your taxes...so go and see Follies while you can (and get some of those taxes back). It is an extravaganza performed extravagantly.

So much of it was good I was swept along in an uncritical haze of wonder and staggered out at the end thinking that it was worth my membership of the NT - even though I had had to sit through the first half of Common a few months ago, before staggering out at half time, and have bailed out of a few other NT shows since then.

One can always find fault, of course. Imelda Staunton was not quite used to her full abilities in a role that needs passionate warmth rather than a character actor - perhaps she is better in roles with more extreme characters, such as in Sweeney Todd. And, occasionally my attention strayed...but perhaps it had to, to recover some energy between the various exceptional numbers dotted throughout the show. And there were so many, from so many in the cast.

Having no knowledge of the plot, or expectations of the performance, it was especially wonderful to have a final set of scenes where so many ends were left loose.

Shows like this don't come around very often - they are too unaffordable. So, don't miss this one.

Follies is an absolute must-see: elegantly directed, with stunning central performances and a timeless score.

Set in the crumbling ruins of a cabaret theatre, long-lost friends and lovers reunite to share memories of their time there, as spectators and as the gorgeous girls up on stage. Throughout the show, we glimpse into the lives of each member of the ensemble, ranging from the French diva whose spirit hasn't aged a day, to the movie star who's just grateful to be alive and others, who mourn for what might have been.

Sondheim's score is brilliantly crafted with witty and insightful lyrics, and the fragmented set offers a perfect contrast to the girls' bedazzled costumes from the past. But special mention must go to the central performances. Imelda Staunton is on cracking form, Philip Quast's voice is unreal, Janie Dee is superb and Tracie Bennett owns every bar of "I'm Still Here".

I knew nothing aboutFolliesbut am so glad to have seen it. It is a celebration of life, of growing older and of seizing every moment.